Paxton Hood on Puritan Adams 3

Spotted Salamander

The mind of Puritan Adams did not express itself in the copious and sonorous eloquence of Hooker, nor had his fancy the solemn, quaintly gargoyled style and thoughtfulness, the subtle paradoxical of Sir Thomas Browne; for, as we have already said, he was a preacher, and he evidently thought constantly of his audience; but in his sermons will be found many of the best characteristics of all the wit of Fuller, and the allegoric lights of Bunyan, and much of the out-of-the-way learning and radiant fancy of Jeremy Taylor. His method and style of treating a text or subject are altogether his own; a style, however, adopted and found very taking since his day. We cannot commend it. Thus in his sermon, “A Generation of Serpents,” from the text, “Their poison is like the poison of a serpent, like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear,” he expounds eleven characters -

1. The Salamander, the troublesome and litigious neighbour, whoever loves and lives in the fire of contention.
2. The Dart, that is, the angry man.
3. The Dipsass, the drunkard. This serpent lives altogether in moorish places: the serpent in the fens, the man at the ale-house.
4. The Crocodile, the hypocrite.
5. The Cockatriee, said to kill with its eyes - the courtesan.
6. The Caterpillar, or the earthworm, emblem of the covetous.
7. The Asp, the traitorous seminary.
8. The Lizard, an emblem of the slothful.
9. The Sea Serpent, the pirate, a very common character in Adams' day.
10. The Stellion, the extortioner.
ll. Draco, the great red dragon.

Sometimes his illustrations are of the very queerest. Thus he speaks of the wonderful making of the tongue: -

To create so little a piece of flesh, and to put such vigour into it: to give it neither bones nor nerves, yet to make it stronger than arms and legs, and those most able and serviceable parts of the body.
Because it is so forcible, therefore bath the most wise God ordained that it shall be but little, that it shall be but one. That so the paruity and singularity may abate the vigour of it. If it were paired, as the arms, legs, hands, feet, it would be much more unruly. For he that cannot tame one tongue, how would he be troubled with twain!
Because it is so unruly, the Lord hath hedged it in, as a man will not trust a wild horse in an open pasture, but prison him in a close pound. A double fence bath the Creator given to confine it - the lips and the teeth - that through those bounds it might not break.

A certain quaint and frequently happy ingenuity characterises all the sermons and the writings of Adams. We have before noticed his resemblance to Herbert: the quaintness of the good parson of Bemerton is found in abundance here, not less than his piety. Churchman as he was, we do not find, indeed, the same temple-er stillness, or carved imagery of thought. Herbert’s life was secluded, lonely, and hermetic; that of Adams was passed apparently for the most part in London. Herbert, too, was a more intense ecclesiastic; his fervours were monastic; and although his poems are not organ-like airs, they are notes from a choir, a strange piercing song. Adams was a man of action, interested in all that went on in the great world; and quaint as he is, his quaintness is rather that we notice in the carved oak traoery of some domestic hall or ancient manor, than the writhing gargoyles, or the dim forms of ancient church window. He did not, like Herbert, invite his fancies in to stay and converse with him; he followed them out; and even while he followed one, a host started up, and we sometimes think he chases them all in rather undignified gait or mood. Yet there are some notes, and they are very frequent, which remind the reader of George Herbert or more aptly Jeremy Taylor.

Men and brethren, let us be thankful. Let our meditations travel with David in the 148th Psalm, first up into heaven. Even the very heavens and heights praise Him. And those blessed angels in His court sing His glory. Descend we then by the celestial bodies, and we shall find the sun, moon, and all the stars of light praising Him. A little lower, we shall perceive the meteors and upper elements, the fire and hail, snow and vapour, magnifying Him, even the wind and storms fulfilling His word. Fall we upon the centre -  the very earth. We shall hear the beasts and cattle, mountains and hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, extolling His name. rl'he chirping birds still sing sweet psalms and carols to the Creator’s praise, every morning when they rise, every evening when they go to rest. Not so much as the very creeping things, saith the Psalmist, noisome dragons, and crawling serpents in the deeds, but they do, in a sort, bless their Maker. Let not man, then, the first-fruits of His creatures, for whose service all the rest were made, he unthankful.

And the following is very sweetly expressed: - 

Pride, fraud, drunkenness, is as Mount Seir to the lovers of them. But, alas 1 how unsafe : if stronger against, and further removed from, the hand of man, yet nearer to God’s hand in heaven, though we acknowledge no place far from God or from His thunder. But we say, it is not always the safest sailing on the top of the mast. To live on the mountainous height of a temporal estate is neither wise nor happy. Men standing in the shade of humble valleys, look up and wonder at the height of hills, and think it goodly living there, as Peter thought Tabor. But when, with weary limbs, they have ascended, and find the beams of the sun melting their spirits, or the cold blasts of wind making their sinews slack, flashes of lightning, or cracks of thunder, soonest endangering their advanced heads, then they confess (checking their proud conceit) the low valley is safest. For the fruitful dews that fall fast on the hills stay least while there; but run down to the valley: and though, on such a promontory, a man further sees, and is further seen, yet, in the valley, where he sees less he enjoys more!

Again

There is so much comfort in sorrow as to make all affliction to the elect, a song in the night. Adversity sends us to Christ, as the leprosy sent those ten. Prosperity makes us turn our backs upon Christ and leave him, as health did those nine (Luke xvii.) David’s sweetest songs were his tears. In misery he spared Saul, his great adversary; in peace, he killed Uriah, his dear friend. The wicked sing with grasshoppers, in fair weather; but the faithful (in this like sirens) can sing in a storm. When a man cannot find peace upon earth, he quickly runs to heaven to seek it. Afflictions sometimes maketh an evil man good, always a good man better.

We could imagine the author of the Urn Burial had the following in his mind in a famous passage: 

No, they that are written in the eternal leaves of heaven, shall never be wrapt in the cloudy sheets of darkness. A man may have his name written in the chronicles, yet lost; written in durable marble, yet perish; written on a monument equal to a Colossus, yet be ignominious ; written on the hospital gates, yet go to hell ; written on his own house, yet another come to possess it. All these are but writings in the dust, or upon the waters, where the characters perish so soon as they are made. They no more prove a man happy than the fool could prove Pontins Pilate a saint, because his name was written in the Creed. But they that are written in heaven, are sure to inherit it.

But it was the age of strange conceits; and absurdities inwrought themselves with every department of taste, the age had not recovered from the grotesque freaks of the Elizabethan time. From those outrageous leaps, and acrobatic displays of genius, even Shakespere is not free, and the architecture of the time, like the speech, we know abounds with strange displays; allegoric lessons were constantly offering their teachings from classic forms and allusions, and essays on the wisdom of the ancients were written in a way which often to us seem ludicrous enough, graceless and tasteless in the different departments of domestic architecture. The pulpit of those times has often been found in harmony with the taste which only employed the power of its genius

To raise the ceiling’s fretted height,
Each panel in achievement's clothing,Rich windows that exclude the light,And passages that lead to nothing.

And quaintness and queerness did assuredly inspire not only many of the lines of the poets and designs of the architects, but the plans and conceptions of the preachers too. Few could preach without interlacing the English with little bits of Latin, - to our ears and eyes it seems the merest pedantry - purposeless, for nothing is illustrated, and nothing proved. ....